


But the second time, it rhymes

by Meatball42



Series: Rare Pairs [71]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Apocalypse Prevented, Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Butterfly Effect, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Character Death Fix, F/M, M/M, Military Homophobia, Multi, Partner Betrayal, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Time Travel Fix-It, Timeline Shenanigans, infinity war fix-it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-03
Updated: 2019-02-03
Packaged: 2019-10-17 11:53:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17559899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meatball42/pseuds/Meatball42
Summary: “There’s something we need you to do.”Sam’s lips are swollen with kisses. “Anything,” he breathes.Steve buries his face in Sam’s neck and Sam closes his eyes.“Anything for you.”





	But the second time, it rhymes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SinginInTheRaine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SinginInTheRaine/gifts).



> This story assumes that the reader is familiar with MCU canon from Captain America: The Winter Soldier through the End Game trailers.
> 
> Thank you very much to l_cloudy who helped give this what little coherence it has, and caught some naughty typos.

“Everyone we know is trying to kill us.”

“Not everyone.”

 

_____________________________________

 

“This is gonna work, Steve.”

“I know it is. Because I don’t know what I’m gonna do if it doesn’t.”

She hesitates, hand hovering over the command prompt. She touches the screen.

“Black Widow.”

_“Access denied.”_

Steve twitches.

“Natasha Romanoff.”

_“Access denied.”_

“Oh Tony,” she says under her breath. Her lip begins to curl. “Smartest Avenger.”

_“Access denied.”_

Steve smiles for the first time since the Decimation.

“Prettiest Avenger?” she asks coquettishly.

_“Access denied.”_

“Please?”

Natasha pauses as the computer lights up in response to Steve.

_“Welcome, Man Out of Time.”_

Thin maroon lines begin to creep through the body of the jet. Natasha hurries to strap herself down to the copilot seat.

“That wasn’t very nice,” she comments.

“Well, he’s not wrong,” Steve says wryly.

And then, they’re gone.

 

_____________________________________

 

“I don’t know if I can do this,” Sam whispers.

Light seeps in around the edges of the curtains. It’s the late night, early morning, and they’re a few dozen stories up, but New York is New York.

Natasha turns over, cuddles in against Sam’s chest. Steve, oblivious, snores on behind her.

“You have to,” she whispers back. “We weren't ready. We were scattered, and everyone else paid the price.”

He is quiet for a long time. The building is heavy around with silence around them. Natasha remembers that the whole Tower is a mausoleum now, a freestanding exoskeleton, devoid of the being who once gave it life.

A sacrifice, years before the war that took it all anyway.

“The world goes on,” Sam says at last. “It always does.”

“You don’t understand,” she tells him. Though, how could he? She can barely grasp it herself, and she watched it happen. “Half of _everyone_ , Sam. The whole universe.”

“Life goes on…” he murmurs, like he’s on the verge of sleep.

Natasha squeezes her eyes shut against traitorous, blasphemous tears.

“Not without you.”

 

_____________________________________

 

“Everyone we know is trying to kill us.”

 

_____________________________________

 

"You can do this," Steve says into Sam's ear. Natasha is close enough to see Sam swallow.

Sam hugs Steve in that American way where they try to pretend they aren't hugging. She gives Sam a real hug, and he squeezes her tight.

"You won't even remember," he whispers into her ear. When she pulls back, his eyes are wet.

Natasha kisses him, for lack of words. She and Steve step off the platform and stand next to Tony's control bench.

Sam swipes his hand over the panel on the jumpsuit Tony rigged up, activating the device. He punches in the security key, and, with one last soulful look, he disappears.

It's anticlimactic. Sam is there, and then there's just empty space, while Tony types away and the projected screen stays dark.

"How will we know—" Steve starts, but FRIDAY cuts him off.

“Boss, something’s gone wrong,” FRIDAY announces. “Our readings are deviating significantly from the projections.”

“You must have put in the wrong coordinates,” Tony accuses them. He looks up at them over his holographic keyboard, fingers flying. “We are way off the reservation.”

“What’s happening?” Steve steps up, staring at the projection that’s currently showing a maroon haze.

Natasha watches the screen Tony’s fighting with. Her gut is turning to stone as she reads along.

“That doesn’t look right,” Steve says grimly.

Tony and Natasha look up at the same time. Tony gasps, a harsh sound in the back of his throat, and takes a step back.

Natasha breathes slowly, deeply, as her heart starts pounding.

Steve turns to them, bewildered. “Is that a desert?”

And then, they’re gone.

 

_____________________________________

 

“Everyone we know is trying to kill us.”

“Sam?”

Steve and Natasha flinch minutely, ready for anything, but Sam doesn’t tense, even when a big hand smooths up his shoulder and comes to rest against the back of his neck.

The new man, a stocky redhead, looks them over and his grin falls off his face. “This doesn’t look like a party.”

“Come on in.” Sam steps back from the door, beckoning. The other man moves with him without interruption, and both of them check Steve and Natasha’s six as they enter the small house.

Natasha is glad she trusted Steve’s judgement. Looks like he’s found them a pair of reliable allies. Against the entirety of SHIELD’s resources? They’re going to need it.

 

_____________________________________

 

“He was the brother I never had,” Sam goes on, crumpling the drained water bottle in his hand. He throws it out the open side of the train.

They’re chugging along at about ten miles an hour. Natasha can watch the bottle bounce down the steep slope after the train tracks, come to a stop on a pile of other litter. The moonlight bounces off it all like some post-modern collection of junk. Steve might have appreciated the joke, but Steve is in Wakanda, visiting Bucky.

“It’s a cliche, but it’s the truth. We came from two different worlds, we had almost nothing in common, but three days into training we were inseparable. You ever get that? Where you just—” he claps his hands. “—click with someone, right from the start?”

“Yeah,” Natasha says with a grin, leaning back on locked arms. “Well, it was after I tried to kill him, and he tried to kill me. But that’s what you mean, right?”

Sam shakes his head, used to her. “A coupla’ officers thought we were, you know, fraternizin’.” A different timbre comes out in his voice, one that she’s never heard from him before. “An’ this was before the repeal, so we got spit shouted in our faces a few times before they figured out we weren’t like that.”

For a moment, Natasha vividly recalls gasping for breath, riding Steve’s fingers while Sam took Steve into his mouth, but she lets it pass. Sam doesn’t need cheering up.

“What was his name?” she asks, after they pass another small village.

“Riley.” His voice gets rough and he clears his throat. “Died—six years ago, now. Man, time flies.”

He looks up at the moon.

“It flies, flies away.”

Natasha waits a decent length of time, then crawls into the darker part of the train car to the nest of sacks they’d made up.

She’s nearly asleep by the time Sam crawls in after her. He pulls her into his arms and holds her close, almost too tightly.

 

_____________________________________

 

Steve and Natasha sit around Sam’s kitchen table, eating the breakfast he kindly prepared them, and figuring out specifically the ways in which they’re screwed.

“So, the real question is: how do the two most wanted people in Washington kidnap a SHIELD officer in broad daylight?”

“Don’t you have a team to help with that?” Riley asks, brow cocked up.

Natasha would give him points for pulling off disapproving while shovelling waffles into his mouth, but it’s not really the time.

“They’re scattered around the world, and in some cases, off-world. We don’t have time to waste.”

“Sounds like a bad set-up to me.” Riley shrugs.

Natasha doesn’t understand why he annoys her so much.

Steve doesn’t seem to notice. He’s engaged in a staring contest with his running buddy. Sam is staring back, frowning as though something is confusing him.

Finally, Steve nods. “We don’t have another option. I’ll try Stark. Maybe he can hack into SHIELD again, get our intel from the inside.”

“I’ll call Clint. Who knows, maybe he’s on vacation to DC right now.” She looks up at Steve through her eyelashes in a way that suggests an eyeroll without actually making one.

Riley snorts. Natasha turns away before she glares at one of the only people willing to keep them out of the public eye right now.

 

_____________________________________

 

Steve turns to them, bewildered. “Is that a desert? But he’s supposed to be in New York, after the Chitauri—”

The screen blinks off, completely.

Natasha looks to Tony so fast her hair whips her in the face, but he’s wavering on his feet. She grabs him by the bicep and he seems to come back to himself.

Tony grins at her in a way she’s never seen from him before, wide and real, crinkles near his eyes. He pushes her hand away, but it’s familiar, friendly. “Fine! I’ll stop messing around! Don’t use your Widow’s wiles on me, you know how Pepper gets jealous.” He steps back up to the keyboard.

Steve meets her eyes, sharing in her confusion.

“What, no quip for that?” Tony says over his shoulder. “You two must be in a hurry. Barnes pop his mop-top up over the wall again?”

“What are you talking about?” Steve asks.

“JARVIS hasn’t turned anything up, but if I know the pair of you, you’re working your contacts in Europe and Northern Africa even though I _told_ you I had it covered, all systems go on the Snow Ghost, and hey. I’m man enough to admit it when I’ve been beat. So let me know where you got wind of him, and I’ll focus the search.”

Natasha is almost afraid to breathe. “Did it work?” she whispers to Steve.

He shakes his head slowly, like he can’t believe it.

And then, they’re gone.

 

_____________________________________

 

Natasha sneaks up to him in the hotel bar.

“ _M’achete un verre_?”

Sam looks up, stunned by the horrible bright pink of the large hat she’s found. It blends her into the beach crowd, but it does nothing for her complexion.

“Uh, _oui, bien sûr_ ,” he stutters.

Natasha breaks character to grin. “Your pronunciation could use some work.”

Sam laughs. “You nearly gave me a heart attack. What are you doing here? I thought you guys had that staff thing to deal with in Sokovia.”

“We do. But we have a message, first.”

“We?”

“Let’s go to your room.”

“ _Après vous, mademoiselle_ ,” he jokes. He touches her back, guiding, and she has to fall into character to avoid pressing back into it.

Steve is already in Sam’s room, and he doesn’t have to contain himself. As soon as they’re through the door he has Sam pressed against the wall like he needs to touch him again before he can breathe, his hands up under Sam’s cotton summer shirt, down Sam’s light linen pants. Natasha has to go close the thin blinds, quickly scan for bugs. When she’s done they’re already on the bed.

Sam is clutching Steve like he’s afraid Steve will pull away at any second. Natasha closes her eyes, remembering their other first time—their real first time—three days out of Wakanda: Steve still red-eyed over Bucky, Sam still bearing the fading bruise on his face from his time on the Raft, Natasha still bruised from fighting Wanda. It had been lonely and desperate and familiar in a cheap motel in a country none of them had ever been to. It had felt like hope, like water in a desert.

She knee-walks onto the bed and takes off her duster. Steve smiles up at her, finally whole again, and Sam’s gaze is filled with hopeful apprehension.

He’s dark from the sun, from being free to go out during the daytime, not on the run from the UN and 117 countries. Frown-lines have yet to set around his eyes, his mouth. She leans down and kisses that mouth, for the thousandth time, for the first time.

“There’s something we need you to do.”

Sam’s lips are swollen with kisses. “Anything,” he breathes.

Steve buries his face in Sam’s neck and Sam closes his eyes.

“Anything for you.”

 

_____________________________________

 

Sun washes through the room as dawn breaks. Natasha turns her face into the pillow to block it out and feels the pull of tender skin on her shoulder. She touches the love-mark gently, smiling to herself.

A few hours later, Steve wakes her up as he and Bucky come back from their run. “Rise and shine, sleepyhead.”

Natasha shakes her head. Steve chuckles.

“Come on Nat. We gotta get to the training room before the new recruits," he coaxes. "It’s Wanda and Pietro’s first day running drills. You gonna leave them with just Tony and Bruce for supervision?”

Natasha burrows deeper under the covers, but Bucky drags them away. “Aw, did we wear you out last night, baby?”

Eyes closed, she kicks out. There’s a loud thump as he falls off the bed. He moans in pain and Steve starts to wheeze laughter.

Natasha pulls the blankets back over herself, but she’s awake, hiding her smile. Her matched pair of super soldiers starts to wrestle on the ground, way too loudly for her to entertain going back to sleep.

“You’re obnoxious,” she calls.

But she wouldn’t change any of it for the world.

**Author's Note:**

> I didn't make [this](http://meatball42.tumblr.com/post/183011197689/misswhovian101-natasha-trying-to-access-the) but it's relevant


End file.
